Emergency land take, road-network centrality and post-disaster land-use policy: Evidence from the post-earthquake reconstruction of L’Aquila, Italy

Land-use policy increasingly operates under conditions of shock and uncertainty, yet the mechanisms through which emergency measures produce persistent land take remain underexplored. In this paper, land take refers to land development involving the conversion of natural, semi-natural or agricultural land to artificial uses, often associated with impervious soil cover. The paper examines how post-earthquake road-access restrictions, safety cordons, and infrastructure-and-amenity siting choices interacted with road-network centrality and land-use change in L’Aquila, Italy. Using a configurational approach, namely Space Syntax, on reconstructed pre-earthquake and post-earthquake road networks, we compute segment-based Integration (NAIN) and Choice (NACH) at multiple radii and relate centrality deciles to a 2014 post-event census of commercial and public amenities through nearest-segment association and buffer-based sensitivity tests. Results show a strong spatial alignment between road closures in and around the historic centre, the emergence of high-centrality road corridors, notably Viale della Croce Rossa and the SS17, and the concentration of post-disaster amenities along those corridors and their immediate surroundings. Two peripheral district centres, Torrione and Torretta, also consolidated as locally autonomous service nuclei, reinforcing a more polycentric pattern that only partly aligned with statutory planning objectives. Rather than proposing a formal predictive model, the paper uses single-case evidence to show how road-network diagnostics can help identify corridors where temporary land uses and emergency-related land take are most likely to persist; support decisions on the reopening of strategic road links; and inform time-bound rules for de-commissioning, reuse, regularisation, and development caps on floor area and intensity. The workflow is low-cost, open-data based and transferable to other hazards and city sizes, providing actionable evidence for planners and governments seeking to align post-disaster responses with land-take control objectives.